Over in England we moved onto the base in a housing area that lay right along a wheat field. During the summers the air was filled with what were called "wheat bugs," small grey-brown colored things about the size of a half grain of rice.

The Brits had a cereal called Wheat-a-bix, which was supposed to be boiled and eaten with milk. I'll give you three guesses what we called it. :-)

Come to think of it, I have never much liked any cold cereal based on wheat, do you?

If you eat any processed food, canned or frozen you would not believe what you have eaten.

I learned that when we had an egg ranch. I got tired of 'playing' with the eggs and cleaning up you know what from 2000 chickens. So I took them to the slaughter house. There was one hen we found had a horrible sore on her wing. I told the kids helping me do not load that chicken or they may not buy any of them. Well someone loaded her and when we got to the slaughter house she was the first chicken the employee took out. He saw the sore and just cut off her wing and went on unloading. After what I saw there that day I didn't eat chicken for ten years. There is no inspection when they are killing chickens like there is when killing beef. Enjoy your dinner. (:

You are right, of course, but I suppose that most of the time what we don't know won't hurt us.

I had a good friend who got a job in a hot dog and sausage factory. The place ran two eight hour shifts a day, but shut down at night. The sausage meat ran through a series of overhead spiral geared troughs that moved the meat and whatnot along into grinders and mixers. It then ran down through a wide variety of packaging machines, and out popped the sausages and hot dogs.

My friend stayed there just one week, just long enough to collect one week's pay and get out. I asked him what had happened. Here's what he told me:

"At night they shut off the machines, but remember now, those troughs are open at the top. In the morning when they turn them on you can hear the rats screaming as they're ground into the machines. I'll never eat another hot dog or sausage as long as I live."

He was a person I trusted, and I believe he was telling the truth.

I'm happy to tell you that he also told me that the place was shut down by the state. I'm also sure that most plants are as clean and well run as they can be. But where money comes into the mix there are always those who will do anything.

Life would be so simple if we all just went by the Sermon on the Mount. There isn't a thing more you need to learn if you read that and take it to heart. You don't even have to be a believer. The most dyed in the wool atheist can see the truth in those words. The lesson embodied in them is the plain truth.

Money is nothing. People are everything.

Anyway, back to the subject: Is there anyone out there who really loves Wheaties et al?